John Chuckman
COMMENT ON SECRETARY OF STATE POMPEO’S CAIRO SPEECH
The American Secretary of State gave a big speech recently in Cairo, Egypt, a speech about the Middle East and America’s role there as a force for good.
Of course, just putting those two thoughts together - America as a force for good and the Middle East - would be bizarre enough, in view of the fact that America has killed, or helped kill, a couple of million people in the region over the last fifteen years or so, all while creating many millions of refugees and bringing chaos to what were some well-ordered societies.
But the Secretary of State’s speech ventured even further into the bizarre and included an anecdote about his always having an open Bible on his office desk, an anecdote told as though it were somehow a merit or claim for good.
My God, the Bible, with all its superstitious myths and tales of destruction and human perversion and hatreds and, yes, even the promise of the world’s coming to a terrifying end, and here’s the highest-ranking cabinet member in the world’s most powerful country bragging about its influence on his work. Well into the Twenty-first Century. How very reassuring.
One thinks of the late Jerry Falwell having been appointed to high office to help run the planet. Even the blubbery looks are a good match.
And to say nothing of the fact that Pompeo was giving the speech in and about a region, the Middle East, where the Bible does not enjoy quite the position it does in rural South Carolina. The Middle East is a region where the Bible is way down the list of best sellers.
But we can at least agree that a good deal of the Bible - from the blood-drenched barbarities of the Old Testament to the New Testament's frenzied nightmares in the Book of Revelations - does read like antique inspiration for America's march through the region. So, perhaps the anecdote was not completely misplaced.
